'how shall we sing the lord's song in a strange land: five psalms' score for any instrument

the score can be downloaded as a pdf

'you look like your mother' scored for four voices

friends scoring music for proper musicians and vocalists has always made me a little envious and being unfulfilled with the idea of producing piano scores no one else could read i have long harboured a desire to produce a score for voice or voices.

talking to the composer alex temple about contemporary classical music and trans*/ gender queer and gender variant people within it's fold i decided to put into action my so far only half realised plans for just such a score.

over the last few months i've drawn various diagrams describing how individuals where to move and vocalise which where to be printed on transparencies and laid over texts (i have long planned to set the beautiful but unsettling lyrics of the psalms this way, perhaps i will some day) but have felt each one was to restrictive in how it instructed the individual performer and though i offer some restrictions in my piano pieces i leave it mostly open to the individual player to determine the sound of the piece.

as often with more ambitious work i fretted over this for a long time only to find a solution quite quickly (or rather in a moment of clarity.)

the nine pages of this score incorporate the text of 'you look like your mother (minus the introduction and afterword) and, as with the book, can be arranged in any order. the lines drawn on the page give the parts for each voice and each voice has two parts per page with a third part given to one of the four voices per page.

no durations or instructions are given.

thank you for your time.

anti-semitism, memory and music

there is no way that we can deny that anti semitism is on the rise across europe and it is a poison, a poison which we should not allow in a civilised society

i have addressed the history of the shoah and the kristallnacht several times and have also focused on anti semitism and it's place in european culture but sadly this is a have so deeply ingrained in our culture that it will come up time and time again.

i was speaking recently to artist, musician and film maker chris dooks regarding the rise of anti semitism in europe and he told me that his greatest worry is that this will make it harder to find graves of german family members who suffered during the shoah. the horror and sadness of this became the germ for a set of piano works based around a setting for the star of david (using a technique of scoring for piano i have discussed here before) but the work was not began as it is such a bleak subject (i had intended two ten minute piano pieces based upon the discussion with chris.)

recently the awesomely (and i mean that in it's true sense - the depth and breath of her work fills me with awe) writer, artist, musician and composer ela orleans spoke of growing up in poland around the site of auschwitz.

combining the two narratives allowed me to finally complete the work as ela orleans' narrative offered a sense of hope and rebirth

i know that this will not be the last time i approach this subject or feel the need to speak out on this issue. anti semitism is a cancer in our society.

john dowland, sorrow and the timelessness of music

i've been working with the artist jude cowen montague on a second ep of works based upon prepared texts derived from well known songs, in this instance songs by john dowland (the first was on folk songs)

immersing myself in the work of such a central figure in english language song has left me even more impressed by his achievements, even more in awe of the beauty contained within his arrangements. few works achieve such an elevated level, a point at which they produce a rush of joy and spiritual and emotional release. bach's setting of john's passion achieves this, cage's silence, byrd's consort songs also have moments which lift the listener out of their own body. all these works (and others) have a timelessness which i have tried to capture in my settings for jude cowen montague's voice.

while working on this ep (hopefully it will be completed soon) i worked on four one hour long organ pieces (all split into two thirty minute sections) for each of the songs we are working with.

i hope these hint towards the timelessness of dowland's work.

a few recent works

i tend to be lazy around this blog and wanted to write a non music one so i thought 'well it's supposed to be about music' so here's a run down of a few recent releases and the rational behind them.




this album remixes laica's 'id situation (a 10" of which can be bought here taking the idea of cctvs and surveillance and humanising the machines. the second track ends with the death of two cameras and the feedback from their dead circuits.



this album was written to commemorate the centenary of the opening of world war one.

the tracks do not use lo-bit sound but rather a form of processing i developed to mimic lo-bit but still allow higher frequency responses - there are still unusual sounds present that you could not get in a lo-bit file

this idea was to mimic the often ludicrous use of noise reduction technology in the remastering of early audio and film, to allow an ironic 'documentary' feel to the work which would act as a counterpoint to the subject matter.




for this release i used the data from the photograph which forms the cover to create the music so, in a way, it is literally a portrait (and an ironic take on growing older)

'you look like your mother' - describing alternative narratives.

as discussed before i have been writing an  auto-biography which contains multiple and largely false narratives.

my aim has been to question the often constructed narratives around trans* identity and the processes by which we construct the narrative thread of our own lifes.

i have spoken in the past about the seductivness of the 'i always knew' tradition of trans* identity in which having known you where a girl/ boy from childhood is treasured and viewed as more authentic. i wished to challenge this in the book and i also wanted to challenge common themes i have found in trans*autobiography relating to coming out, 'transitioning,' medication and surgery. as i state in the book

so many choices for the direction of biography not least of which is when to allow the great life changing moment too occur. there are various trusted approaches: rebirth upon surgery, rebirth upon taking hormones

some of these narratives grew out of the 'standards of care' which, for many generations of trans*women including my own, formed the basis of how we understood ourselves, changed how we constructed our own narratives. though this time has passed and a greater openness exists in the community to alternative narratives the old ideas of legitimacy and the old hierarchies hold true.

ofcorse the book goes beyond only discussion trans*autobiography to discuss the whole genera of autobiography, biography and even the idea of narrative itself.

though indebted to b. s. johnson's 'the unfortunates' i wished to move beyond the limited structure he offered (or even that offered by marc saporta) by destroying the order and sense of the page, offering narratives that collapse in upon themselves, eat their own tails.

this is an ending which will lead you back to the beginning, a circle, a narrative eating it’s own  tail. stop, begin, speak.  end

the book can be purchased along with two cds of music and a two hour film on my bandcamp and as a stand alone item here

in praise of knowledge (aka. 'your work is pretentious' yea, like i care)

i've been accused of pretension recently and it's hardly been the first time.

i don't mind, indeed the term has taken on a meaning for many, particularly anti-intilectuals, which makes it a badge of honour: it no longer means that you parade knowledge that you do not have but that you are not afraid to show what knowledge you possess.

while i have no desire to alienate people by talking over their heads i am not willing to keep my interests in history, philosophy, film, literature, music and poetry out of my work and will explain where my ideas have came from rather than (as an elitist would) assume knowledge.

i know a little about and am interested in the history of fascism in europe so i felt it was not pretentious to produce a three part work on the subject.

i have lived with the often obtuse text of t.s. eliot's 'four quartets' for most of my adult life so felt i could produce work around that subject

i have read quite a bit on early 20th century exploration of the north and south poles so felt i could produce work around that subject

i have both read about the marian cult and was brought up catholic so i felt i could produce work around that subject

i have read much anglo-saxon poetry and prose so...well you get the picture.

i see no problem with handling complex issues and i have no problem with people having greater knowledge than me. likewise i have no problem with obscure and difficult musical forms such as drone, minimalism and free improvisation so why should i produce work other than that which interests me?

the academy often seeks to limit access to culture and learning to those outside it's circle and this is met by an equal but sadly not opposite force outside the academy which seeks to shame those who look to gain knowledge. i will have no part of either.

when i was growing up my parents would do what they could to feed my interest in literature and felt a great pride in my growing intellect. i still remember my father taking me to buy two bookcases and proudly telling everyone in the shop that i 'liked to read.' no one should be ashamed of knowledge either having knowledge, seeking knowledge or having little knowledge in a field but wanting more.  

my work is pretentious? yea like i care.

deus ex machina: conceptual music and the possibilities of performance

in discusion with the composer james wise (with whom i have collaborated on two albums and aided the research into some of his own compositions) regarding the possibility (or rather joke) of filling a one hundred and eighty five tb magnetic tape produced by sony i came up with the concept of producing a seven day long piece for performance which was to be both filmed and recorded and released on one medium ie. a single external hard drive.

the piece became 'deus ex machina' and it may possibly be performed in some way as people have volunteered to find a venue to host it.

when i wrote the score for it (more in the style of alvin lucier and annea lockwood's sets of written instructions) i did not intend a performance to be attempted, it was purely conceptual. now that possibility may come to be.

treatise pp. 168 -173: completed

as promised i have completed the cardew piece.

i originally intended to record this as a single three hour piece but the logistics (namely that i can only record 1 1/2 hours at a time and don't have an external device) so i recorded it as a series of one hour pieces, taking two hours at a time.

this follows the score pretty closely but deviates slightly by taking sections which cover roughly 1/3rd of the page and making them half the length of the page within the timescale of the performance.

so, here it is: six pages of 'treatise,' three hours of music.

i'll also be engaging in a much looser improvisation for piano based on pages from the score when i have the time.

a round up of releases for easter and a liminal recording

i've been very lazy lately and haven't updated this blog so here's a little round up of some recent releases.

firstly are two releases for easter, the first addressing the political nature of the easter story and the second exploring the nature of 'resurrection'

firstly comes ''wild calla lillies growing on the banks of the allander symbolise the resurrection of judas who will free us from roman tyranny'

this discuses the idea of judas as a zealot, a revolutionary jewish sect who wanted to promote the violent overthrow of roman rule. in the reading of the easter story foregrounding this sees judas as a disillusioned revolutionary who saw the one great hope of revolution (jesus) becoming increasingly mystical and increasingly disinterested in poverty and the world judas inhabited. the last chance of a revolution was to sacrifice jesus, to allow this now useless leader to become a martyr who's death would inflame others to act.

in this reading judas is a hero




the second work for easter examines 'reserection' in light of spring, in light of the earth awakening from the long sleep of winter.




finally comes 'we have arisen from sleep' a deliberate attempt to produce a 'liminal' work in the style of coil's 'muzik to play in the dark' albums.

this album uses the spark-le hybrid drum machine processed through audiomulch.

more cardew (cycles and studies: finding a waveform study in treatise

i've been poring over a print edition of 'treatise' and have found the work to be cyclical and to have sections which can be described as 'movements' where the notation has a consistency.

i have chosen to focus on one of these sections and produce a single piece from it which will be three hours long with a 'preface' of another 30 minute section.

the seven pages i have selected share the same line, sometimes broken, sometimes uneaven, thinning out towards the middle of the final page and i see a waveform there.

my main focus then will be on a waveform study i see in the score and it will be both long and remarkably minimal.

now i only need to find the time needed to perform and record it

stop me if you've heard this one before (more thoughts on cardew's 'treatise')

I've put the realisation of 'treatise' on hold while i wait for a physical copy of the score to arrive in the post and decided to have a look at some random sections from his working notes (published in 'cornelius cardew: a reader' pub. copula) and found something very intriguing:

6th march '63: (written on the score) NB the sound should be a picture of the score, not vice versa

this has led me to consider making two versions of the pages i select to work on with the second based upon sound produced by the data contained in scans of the pages.

treatise page 73

further to today's post regarding cardew's 'treatise' i have completed a first interpretation

i chose page 73 as it gave an easy (though, it turned out, not so easy) entry into the score.

i interpreted this using piano with the central line being taken as a marker of durations for separate sections of the page and as a sign separating the score in two.

i interpreted the top half of the score (channeled to the left in the resultant mix) as having a single note for the left hand (in the later part of the page) while the left hand moved up the keyboard (thinking not of notes but the position of my hands) randomly.

the bottom half of the score was interpreted as having one hand ascending in notes and the other descending.

here is the resultant piece.

 

preliminary notes towards interpreting cardew's 'treatse'

cardew's 'treatise' is one of the legendary works of the 20th century, a massive graphic score of wonderful complexity and beauty and i've decided to try to interpret some pages from it.

when i look at pages like this i see synths and waveforms in the curves and piano or organ notes in the straight lines.

here is see piano notes held for different periods with the line in the middle of the page possibly being seen as a split between left and right channels or left or right hands

other observations are as follows:

forms appearing in boxes are independent sections repeated once, those appearing within curves and circles are loops repeated from the point they occur until the end of the section/ page and groups of parallel lines relate to the density of a waveform on a synthesiser.

this should be fun

'three songs for ghosts' - nationalism, fascism and death

for a long time the horrors of the twentieth century's fascination with nationalism, fascism and the nation state have haunted my work. from works based on the documentary 'night and fog' through discussions of anti-semitism, the concept of the nation state, the shoah and the kristallnacht these themes have always been present in my work.

i was trying to find a way to compose a longer work, a single album, discussing the nature and processes by which a nation succumbs to the evils of fascism, the narrative thread that unifies all movements based upon notions taken from romantic nationalism, but was having trouble finding a structure which was not didactic and a formal method which was not insulting to the memories of those who died.

reading yvonne sherratt's 'hitler's philosophers' i came across a passage from walter benjaman's 'berlin childhood around 1900' which included the sentence 'the child that stands behind the doorway curtain himself becomes something white which flutters, a ghost' which reminded me of the words of jacob bronowski in 'the assent of man':

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization into a regiment of ghosts. Obedient ghosts. Or Tortured ghosts.

the two quotes helped form bookends for an album which, again, i planed to be a lengthy one. after improvising two pieces based around these quotes i realised that, in the end, all the people slaughtered in nationalist and fascist purges in the 20th century could be described using the term that the nazi party used 'undesirables'

in stalin's russia they where undesirables, in rwanda they where undesirables, in the former yugoslavia they where 'undesirables' everywhere they are undesirables.

the process of forming a national or political identity must always result in the process freud described as 'foreclosure' whereby that which is counted as the 'in' group can only be defined by creating an 'out' group.

the out group are always 'undesirables' and are always, at best, disposable. at worst they need to be destroyed.

this album is for all the undesirables who have been and who will come into being in the future. the cycle of violence always begins again.

cherry blossoms

i and the great drone artist april larson have collaborated on an album about cherry blossoms.

my pieces consist of a drone and a piano improvisation based around repetitions of the word 'fall.'

the idea was that while i, in the uk, look at the cherry trees blossoming in spring for those engaging in the cherry blossom festivals in japan it is autumn, 'fall.'

a random key on the piano was selected to represent the letter 'a' (in 'fall') and the keys corresponding to  the letters f and l where determined from this. this was repeated three times (one for each month of the new year) and the piece improvised from this point.

here is the complete album.




and my piano piece

'be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good' loving your enemy and the death of fred phelps

this week both my partner's grandmother and fred phelps died on the same day. i see no need to celebrate the death of one while mourning the passing of another.

romans 12: 21 reads 'be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good' 

it is not our place to hate fed phelps or to know what was in his heart, what he saw in his final years. we do know that he was thrown out of the church he once led; perhaps as he faced his own death he saw the evil he had done and recoiled in horror. we will probably never know but we know one thing, we know that hate will destroy us as surely as it destroyed fred phelps and we must turn from it while we can.

i offer no prayers for fred phelps, or for my partner's grandmother, as i am an agnostic but i offer hope for others, the hope found in 'overcome[ing] evil with good'

this post contains a link to my own track on the death of fred phelps (and i think this week's other death is in there too) and to a friend's track. he says, in the description to his album:

Please don't throw back all of the hate Fred Phelps spewed with his words and actions during this his time of passing with hate in your own words and actions about it. Instead, counter his legacy with LOVE. That is how you defeat it. If it is with hate, he has won in death, and you aren't much better than he was in life. 

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." --- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good 

remixing in the library

since listening to uschi-no-michi's 'ameratsu' i've had an urge to remix it using darwin's 'on the origin of species' as a guide to the length of the cuts.

the idea was to record the length of each chapter in the book and then produce cuts corresponding to these lengths with each page represented but one second of time so that a twenty page chapter would be represented by twenty seconds of time, a thirty page chapter by thirty seconds and so on.

in the end a strict adherence to page lengths proved impossible as the main vocal was cut off half way through a word and other cuts featured periods of silence. in the end a slightly looser version of the original idea was used where the length of a cut could be slightly lengthened or truncated (and where a larger section of the main vocal was taken) to allow for a more organic sounding piece.

the finished piece is available on my bandcamp while the original can be found here

making music you are uncomfortable with (notes on composing 'after without sanctuary'

i recently decided, after thinking about it for a long time, to buy 'without sanctury: lynching photography in america' and, after reading it, to work on an album based on it's contents.

there where several problems associated with this; firstly i wondered if i had any right to work on something connected with the history and struggle of another group - if i, as a white person, was not infringing on the struggle of people of colour. secondly there was a simple issue of taste involved, could i make music based on other people's pain and suffering. lastly there was the question of doing the topic justice and it is this where i feel the piece fails but i could not see how to make it succeed.

though i chose to set the names of individuals who's fate is featured in the book (and a free improvisation based around abel meeropol's song 'strange fruit') this approach left me unable to discuss the historical context of lynching, it's nature not as a manifestation of the darkness that lies within society but as a manifestation of a particular set of political and economic conditions in the southern states of the usa. lynching was not a sociological event but a historical one as leon f. litwack makes plain in his essay 'hellhounds' contained within 'without sanctuary'

i have been accused before of having an 'unclear' political outlook but in reality i do not have an ideological position to promote but rather an obsession with easing the suffering of others, a need to focus on the individual rather than the group or the wider political or historical context. as such my choice makes sense to me but leaves this album open to an accusation of not recognising the reality of lynching as a phenomena.

of this i stand guilty and for this reason i consider the album a failure.